Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I wish to welcome our guest Chaplain today, along with Senator Helms. I am very proud that she would be our guest Chaplain. Her father is a friend of all of ours and received the well deserved congressional gold medal. It is obvious by listening to Anne Graham Lotz that she possesses that same great character, inspiration, and leadership as a preacher as well. I welcome her to the Senate and compliment and congratulate Senator Helms for inviting her to be our guest Chaplain.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. What was the request?

Mr. NICKLES. I have a statement to make on the vote we will have in 10 minutes, and then I will be happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I am happy to have the Senator from West Virginia speak. I do wish to speak on the issue we have before us. Parliamentary inquiry: The unanimous consent calls for a vote at 12:30; is that correct?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I think we have had some good debate. I am not here to debate the substance of the two proposals, but I am here to debate strongly against voting for cloture. It seems like I was here yesterday doing the same thing on the Interior bill. I am going to do it again. My friend and colleague for whom I have the greatest respect, the Senator from West Virginia, knows the Senate rules better than any--I mentioned yesterday that we are getting way too frivolous about dropping cloture votes every time somebody wants to have a vote. It achieves no purpose whatsoever. That is exactly what is going to happen here. Cloture is a very serious procedure. That limits a Senator's ability to offer amendments. The Senate of the United States is one of the greatest institutions in the history of democracy, and we are going to have cloture. I have heard some colleagues say they hope it is invoked. If it is, that means the amendment the Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Thompson, is offering, along with Senator Gramm and Senator Miller, cannot be offered because it would be nongermane. Are we going to deny them the opportunity to offer an amendment they have worked hard on and which every colleague in this body knows they are entitled to offer? Are we going to file cloture so you can't offer amendments to it? I am amazed at how quickly people draw their gun of cloture to deny Senators on both sides the opportunity to offer amendments. I know there are a lot of amendments that are floating around. I have heard people say, for example, I think I might do an amendment dealing with the intelligence operation. Those amendments, in almost all likelihood, would be nongermane. I just urge my colleagues to let us respect the rights of individual Senators to offer amendments.

Mr. NICKLES. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I appreciate my good friend from Connecticut doing that. I just say, since I have taken all of Senator Thompson's time, I hope Senator Thompson, if he wishes, will be able to speak on the issue. We have had an interesting colloquy. And I am happy to extend that time. I am happy to work with my friend and colleague. I happen to be one who thinks the Senate does not have to wait on the House. It is tradition. It is not constitutional. But the Senate has not been setting records. Well, maybe we are setting records on Interior. We have been on it for 3 weeks and have not finished it. So we are not doing our job. Maybe the House isn't getting its job done, either. Hopefully, both will get it done. I would hope my colleague from Connecticut would yield some time to the Senator from Tennessee on the issue at hand. I appreciate the consideration of the Chair and my friends. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. I appreciate the question of my good friend. I am sure he is aware of the Senate rules postcloture. Germaneness requirements are so strict that they prohibit a lot of amendments; amendments that are, frankly, quite germane wouldn't be germane by the ruling of the Parliamentarian and by the history and precedents of the Senate. We have all been around here for a while--some of us longer than others. Postcloture germaneness is very strict and would prohibit probably 90-some percent of the amendments to be offered. Any Senator could offer amendments to strike a section of the Senator's bill. I guess we have been doing that a long time, but that is not the way to do it. The Senator from Texas should be entitled to offer his amendment. Senator Miller cosponsored the amendment. A lot of us have cosponsored the amendment. We want to have the right to offer that amendment. I haven't asked the Parliamentarian. But I would guess, if the Parliamentarians have reviewed the language, they would find that amendment would be nongermane postcloture. It is germane to the subject. It would be germane by almost anybody's definition of germaneness because we are talking about homeland security. It would be germane because it is the President's proposal. The White House worked on it, but according to strict Parliamentarian procedures, it may well be ruled nongermane.

Mr. NICKLES. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. I appreciate my colleague saying it is the ruling of the Chair. And the ruling would be following the advice most likely of the Parliamentarian who would be following the precedents of the Senate. And the precedents of the Senate would be postcloture germaneness, which is very strict, indeed. And most germane amendments would fall. We have just begun this debate. I will tell my friend and colleague, who is also the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, that we agreed to allow two bills to go simultaneously--Interior and the Department of Homeland Security. Neither bill is moving, much to my chagrin as a person who realizes we only have 10 days left in this fiscal year, and we haven't been passing appropriations bills. We dual-tracked some bills when the Senator from West Virginia was majority leader. We dual-tracked bills under Bob Dole as well. Sometimes it works. For the last 3 weeks it has not worked. We haven't made adequate progress on Homeland Security, and we haven't made adequate progress on Interior. Maybe it is because all of us have to fight or to wrestle with too many issues simultaneously. I am not sure. But the progress on both bills has been rather poor. If we want to--and I want to--pass every appropriations bill by the end of the fiscal year and have them on the President's desk for his signature, or for his veto. I think that is our constitutional responsibility. We are not getting it done. That is disappointing me. I happen to think there probably is no greater issue confronting this Congress than the Department of Homeland Security. And I think we should have the opportunity to be able to offer alternatives. If cloture is invoked, I am afraid the primary alternative authored by Senators Gramm, Miller, Thompson, and myself wouldn't be allowed postcloture. That is why I would say in fairness that we can count votes. I know you are not going to get cloture. I do not know why we are doing it. If we gave you cloture, we could tie this place up. Nobody is filibustering this bill. No one--at least on this side. Maybe others are. Maybe others have different agendas, but no one on this side of the aisle wants to filibuster this bill in any way, shape, or form. I will say the same thing for the Interior bill. We had a vote on cloture on the Interior bill. I heard the Senator from West Virginia say he wouldn't filibuster. We are not filibustering. Cloture is supposed to shut off debate. Why? We are not having extended debate. We are not stretching out debate, not on Interior--and not on Homeland Security. We are willing to vote on the amendments on the Department of the Interior, and vote. We may win; we may lose. I have won some; I have lost some. That is part of being a legislator. The same thing for Homeland Security; let us vote on the alternative.

Mr. NICKLES. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. I would be happy to respond to my good friend and colleague. I will help you try to get the appropriations bills done. I will also tell you what I told my very good friend, Senator Reid. I will object to dual-tracking on homeland security and appropriations bills simultaneously because it doesn't work. I think maybe we should have a little greater focus and stay on homeland security. I don't care if we stay all night and all weekend, this is an important issue. We ought to finish it. I will tell my friend and colleague from West Virginia that I will stay all night, and we will help finish these appropriations bills. I don't care if we have to work every weekend between now and the end of the year, let us do it. But I don't like this idea of dual-tracking unless we have a greater understanding on the Interior bill. Let us finish it. I used to manage the Interior bill. I worked with my colleague. I was chairman of the committee. I was chairman, and I was ranking. We did the Interior bill year after year, I might mention, with my colleague, Senator Reid, also assisting on the floor. We did that bill generally in 3 days. We got it done. It is usually a bipartisan bill, and it would usually pass with 90 votes.

Mr. NICKLES. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. Just knowing postcloture, if the Senator from Tennessee offered the substitute section dealing with collective bargaining, dealing with Presidential flexibility, I can assure you--or my guess is--that 90 percent of those would be ruled nongermane. And that is just the facts of the postcloture rules in the Senate. I understand what you are saying. One way we can nibble, we can strike. We can always strike, but if we wanted to have strike-and- insert language, most of those amendments would be ruled nongermane. That is the reason why I am urging my colleagues to vote no.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. Does the Senator think it would expedite completion of homeland security if we allow Senator Gramm's and Senator Miller's amendment to be adopted, or at least be voted on? Let's have an up-or- down vote on the Gramm-Miller substitute, let's have an up-or-down vote on Lieberman, and maybe a couple other amendments, and we can complete this bill.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. I don't think I heard an answer to the question. Shouldn't Senators Gramm and Miller be entitled to offer their amendment? And you also said there are some people stalling. There is nobody on this side of the aisle who is stalling this piece of legislation. And either side can move to table Senator Byrd's amendment. I am happy to do that. But I am going to always insist that our colleagues have a right to offer their amendment. Won't you agree with me to give Senator Gramm and Senator Miller a vote on their amendment?

Mr. NICKLES. Cloture would stop them from having a vote.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank my colleague and friend from West Virginia for his yielding a couple minutes. I will be brief. I urge my colleagues to vote no on cloture. I say that knowing my friend and colleague from West Virginia, I guess, is going to support it. But he is chairman of the Appropriations Committee. I have been on the committee. I have been in the Senate for a long time. It is a very bad idea to start filing cloture on any amendment that you don't like on appropriations bills. It is a bad idea for a couple reasons. One, it won't work. You are not going to be able to take a cloture vote and say, ``We will have a fire amendment and it is going to spend several hundred million dollars on fire, but we will not have any other amendment dealing with this issue,'' because it won't work. The Senator from Idaho is entitled to his amendment. Even if cloture is invoked, we can still get a vote on the Senator's amendment, or some other Senator can offer a similar amendment. I will, first, tell my colleague from West Virginia, I don't like cloture. To me, it should be used very sparingly. It is becoming far too prevalent in the Senate where somebody says: We will just file cloture. Someone told me: We will file cloture on homeland security. We will wrap that up. Of course, that would deny us the opportunity to offer the President's bill on homeland security. They may file it, but they will not get cloture. The President is entitled to have a vote on his homeland security proposal, and we are going to get it, just as the Senator from Idaho is entitled to have his vote on fire control. Other Senators have ideas. My point is, you can waste days on cloture. We wasted 3 days. No one on this side of the aisle was filibustering the Interior bill or filibustering homeland security, nor should they, in my opinion. I hope we don't have filibusters ever, frankly, on appropriations bills. We need to decide how much we are going to spend and how we will do it. Maybe if somebody came up with an amendment that is so offensive, so intrusive, so anti an individual State that they would filibuster, that might be unique, but I haven't found that yet in my Senate career on an appropriations bill. I can't remember filibusters on appropriations bills. I have only been here 22 years--not nearly as long as my friend from West Virginia. It is a terrible idea if somebody says: I don't like that amendment so we will file cloture on it and hope it goes away. If cloture is adopted, the Craig-Domenici amendment will disappear. I am telling my colleagues, it will not disappear, even if cloture is invoked. And if it is, I might tell my friends, we could spread out, we could waste another couple days. I don't think anybody wants to do that because we have no interest in filibustering anything. My colleague from New Mexico is a very good legislator, and he has a couple ideas on fire management, and so does my colleague from Idaho. I know the other Senator from Idaho and other Senators have ideas, and they are entitled to have their amendments considered. And they will be considered at some point. I urge my colleagues, let's not get in the habit of going the route of cloture if an amendment appears and we say we don't really like it. That process will not work. We only have a week from Monday to complete action on the appropriations bills, if we are going to have them done by the end of the fiscal year. That is only 13 days. We have already spent a week and a half on the Interior bill and we are not even getting close. We have basically had an amendment on drought, and we were precluded from offering another drought amendment. And now we have a fire amendment, appropriating money for fire, and my colleague is trying to be denied a vote. This side is going to find a way to get some votes on this bill. We can spend weeks doing it or we can spend days. We can spend an hour. I heard my colleague from Idaho said he is willing to have a time limit. He is willing to have a side by side. I know the Senator from New Mexico has a fire amendment. Great. Senator Bingaman, I think, that is a different fire amendment, and I think that is fine. Let's vote on those amendments. I appreciate my colleague from West Virginia yielding. I urge my colleagues to vote no on cloture.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. Correct me if I am wrong. If cloture is invoked, the amendment of our friend from Idaho would no longer be germane and it would fall. We would like our colleague to have the right to offer his amendment.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms), the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Murkowski), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Smith), the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Smith), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts) are necessarily absent.